Research Catalog

Title

Wonderful blood : theology and practice in late medieval northern Germany and beyond / Caroline Walker Bynum.

Author

Bynum, Caroline Walker.

Publication

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2007], ©2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xviii, 402 pages : illustrations, map; 25 cm.

Summary

"In Wonderful Blood, Caroline Walker Bynum studies the saving power attributed to Christ's blood at north German cult sites such as Wilsnack, the theological controversy such sites generated, and the hundreds of devotional paintings, poems, and prayers dedicated to Christ's wounds, scourging, and bloody crucifixion. She argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, pious practice, and theology. As object of veneration, blood provided a focus of intense debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a prominent subject of northern art and a central symbol in the visions of mystics and the prayers of ordinary people."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

[The Middle Ages series]

Uniform Title

Middle Ages series.

Subjects

• Blood > Religious aspects > Christianity
• Bloed
• Blood > Symbolic aspects
• Wilsnack
• Bedevaarten
• Noord-Duitsland
• Sacrifice > Christianity
• Germany > Church history
• Germany > Religious life and customs

Note

• Series from jacket.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [351]-385) and index.

Contents

1. Introduction : a frenzy for blood -- 2. Wilsnack -- 3. Cults in Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg -- 4. Debates about eucharistic transformations and blood relics -- 5. Christ's blood in the Triduum Mortis -- 6. A concern for immutability -- 7. Living blood poured out -- 8. Blood as separated and shed -- 9. Late medieval soteriology -- 10. Sacrificial theology -- 11. The aporia of sacrifice -- 12. Conclusion : why blood?

ISBN

• 0812239857 (alk. paper)
• 9780812239850 (alk. paper)
• 9780812220193 (pbk.)
• 0812220196 (pbk.)

LCCN

• 2006051487
• 99934718960

OCLC

• 74988499
• ocm74988499\
• SCSB-5312943

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries